No Rolls-Royce Nene Goodwill

WI the West never gives the Soviet Union the Rolls-Royce Nene engine as a gesture of goodwill? According to Wiki, the Nene was essential to the production of an effective MiG-15.

Would this leave the Soviets with a technology or aircraft gap, or would this POD not really change a whole lot?
 
Well prior to receiving the Nene, the Soviets were working off copied German jet engines. They found themselves unable to perfect the technology thus necessitating the advent of the Nene. Without it, the Soviets are left with little other choice than to continue down the road they were on. Fortunately for them, this isn't a dead end, the French managed to do something similiar with their Atar engines and they turned out all right.

What it probably does mean is that the MiG-15 as we know it is probably butterflied away. Without the reliable powerplant of the Rolls Royce Nene, I doubt the Soviets are going to attempt a single engine design. In all likelihood the ungainly MiG-9 will probably be further refined, given bigger engines, swept wings, redesigned control features etc. while the Soviets work on perfecting their copied German engines like the French did in OTL.

Come the Korean War TTL's MiG 15 (more like a MiG-9) doesn't sweep the floor with the UN fighters and is roughly equal to the P-80. However this does little more than delay the advent of the F-86.

Eventually I suspect the Soviets will come up with a workable design and proceed to develop better fighters but not in time for the Korean War...
 
I tend to agree. The Nene is a much simpler design concept than the German axial flow engines, thus much easier to reverse engineer for a country who was well behind in the jet race. It's a simple choice when it between reverse engineering a simple, light and powerful engine and getting a complex, poorly constructed, superseeded, underpowered working.

I don't doubt that in the absence of something better the Soviets could produce something useful from the fusion of their own work and the German engines. But as people have said it would only be in the Meteor/Me262/P80 class rather than the MiG 15/Sabre class.
 
I've seen a suggestion the shock of the Mig15 pushed the US to ensure it was always ahead of the Soviets - if true, if the shock doesn't occur in Korea, when does it occur?
 
I've seen a suggestion the shock of the Mig15 pushed the US to ensure it was always ahead of the Soviets - if true, if the shock doesn't occur in Korea, when does it occur?

If the UK didn't share their engine technology it would be when British aircraft constantly outperformed their US contemporaries.
 
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